


and I was focused on survival

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Discussion of Abortion, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 16:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5709934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He waits for her to figure it out and lead anyway. He waits long minutes before he realizes she isn't going to. (Introspective Revalak, Jedi Civil War era.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	and I was focused on survival

**Author's Note:**

> The alternative summary of this fic was "Revan and Malak have a conversation about abortion." I scrapped it because that isn't what it's about thematically -- if that was all I wouldn't post it -- but let this be your warning. (Explanation at the bottom.)
> 
> Takes place in the same universe as Educational Conversations, because apparently all I post in KOTOR fandom is sex ed? Eventually I will have written enough of the epic KOTOR-era AU to post that. I hope. 
> 
> Continuity note: in this 'verse, Malak was a Jedi Healer before he followed Revan to the Mandalorian Wars, and while he can no longer heal with the Force at this point in time, he still has all associated medical training.
> 
> Title is from the lyrics of "Deep Sea Diver" by Angel Haze.

Malak is due to be off deck in a half an hour when he feels Revan's attention through the bond.

It's relatively unobtrusive; he knows she's there, but if he was concentrating he'd be able to ignore her until he was done. She knows his schedule as well as he does, at least when they're on the same ship. Something that happens less and less, lately.

He isn't really doing anything on the bridge but try not to loom in a way that is actively disruptive, as opposed to normal, discipline and productivity inspiring looming, so he sends back a feeler in the Force.

She doesn't seem distracted, so he sends her a _Hey_.

_Malak._ Her voice is tinged with relief.  _You're free soon?_

_A half hour. If I tell you nothing looks like it will hold me up, I'll jinx it. I can leave now if you need me, though._

_It isn't particularly time sensitive,_ Revan says.  _See you when your shift ends._

The rest of the shift crawls, because Revan's put up her blocks again – not an icy wall that would make him worry she was actually hiding something important, but the door is closed and locked and the metaphorical privacy sign is up. He spends it shifting on his feet quietly and wondering what's up with her.

If it was work, she'd have just said so. Unless she was trying not to distract him, but they talk when they're on the bridge and nothing's happening all the time, because when nothing is happening on the bridge, the superior officer's job primarily involves not getting in the way. (Hence the carefully calibrated looming.)

He has no idea what it might be if not work, though, because Revan increasingly has almost nothing else in her life. Not to mention there'd be very little reason not to talk about that, either. So he has no points either side for work versus not work, but it has to be something distracting, or sensitive, or upsetting. Or all three.

Apart from the wondering, the rest of his shift is uneventful, so apparently he avoided calling down a jinx from the Force on them. He knocks on the mental door as he leaves and gets a casual  _my quarters_ tossed at him.

He has a code to enter Revan's quarters; she can override it, but no one else can. The door opens, and Revan is sitting at her desk, in mask and hood but not the armor. He waits quietly while she signs out of the call and flips the comm off, then turns to him and pulls the mask off.

“Hey,” she says to him, and smiles, tossing her hood back.

“Hello,” he says, wincing a little bit internally at the way the vocalizer sounds; he doesn't think of it much at work anymore, but every so often, it twinges with Revan, because he expects to sound like himself with Revan.

It always passes quickly, and especially quickly today, because studying Revan's face, he  _knows_ something is wrong. Revan is a shitty actor. She's smiling, but the lines around her eyes and the way a little more of her golden irises show than usual say that she's worried as hell.

No, not worried, he thinks, going to her. Scared, Revan is scared, and now he is, too.

She gets up and meets him a few feet from the desk, and lets him slide an arm around him. Her head leans against his chest, and she doesn't protest his fingers running along her hair.

It's definitely not work. If it was work, she wouldn't go to him for comfort, certainly wouldn't let him stroke her back and cradle her against him. She is always businesslike about work, even when he can feel that she's scared out of her mind. And when she's scared out of her mind at work, she leaves the mask on. Revan _knows_ she's a shitty actor.

But there is still very little else it could be, and now Malak is  _almost_ scared out of his mind. Is she sick? He doesn't remember anything showing in her medical records, but she's been in battle since then. Is it one of their personal friends? But then she wouldn't be so quiet, she would be planning something.

“I'm sorry,” she says, muffled into his chest. “I'm scaring you, too now.”

“Revan, what's wrong?” he asks,

There is a short pause.

“I'm pregnant,” she says.

“Oh,” he says, and then as comprehension hits, _oh_.

That would explain the specific tenor of the fear: like being caught in a trap, a mix of terror and confinement and revulsion. He's felt it in other women before, mostly soldiers or other Jedi seeking abortions when he was a healer. He is well aware some women look upon this as a blessing, and of all of the reasons it is a problem for them.

“Yeah.” He feels her shrug. “It's not like you can slip up with an IUD, but I've been looking up statistics, and I guess some women get pregnant anyway with them. We're using condoms too from now on.”

“That's fine,” he says automatically. There isn't a tie on the end of her braid – she must have been undressing when the comm call came in – and he starts carding his fingers through her hair, unbraiding it absently.

Revan is limp against him. It puts him in mind of times years past, of her lying against him like a cat while they studied, or falling asleep on him in transport when they were just Republic soldiers.

He wants it to be a sign of affection and ease. Unfortunately, even if he couldn't feel her mind, he would know otherwise; she's panicking, this is a problem she can't just handle herself and she knows it, and she doesn't want to or doesn't know how to ask.

He waits for her to figure it out and lead anyway. He waits long minutes, and undoes her braid completely, before he realizes she isn't going to.

“Let's sit down,” he says. His worry skyrockets when she nods and waits for him to guide her to her bed, which is the only place two people can sit down close together in the room.

She seems a little calmer once she's sitting down and centered instead of leaning against his chest. Or maybe she's just withdrawn. Revan can't act, but she can change her mind, become who she needs to be, and he's watched her seem to step back inside her head and remove the emotions that used to display so openly on her face over the last months.

He is waiting again, unconsciously, for her to lead the way and indicate where this conversation is going. Once more, he is disappointed, and he has to try and discard conversation openers. _Should I review your medical options,_ _you know whatever you decide I'll still be here, are you experiencing any of these symptoms, are you okay..._

Things out of sex ed or doctor training, from ordinary situations to be spoken by ordinary people. None particularly germane to the situation.

“Do you want me to be your husband or your doctor right now?” he asks, finally, because he has to say something if she isn't going to and there are two broad ways he can see this conversation going. The vocalizer helps him keep his tone as completely monotone as possible. He is not sure this is a good thing; if he hadn't had it his voice would have broken there, probably, and his worry would certainly have displayed. She may need to hear it. _He_ kind of needs to hear it, but she can sense him through the Force if she wants to, and he can't have his voice back anyway.

Revan breaths out slowly. “I couldn't possibly keep it.”

“The situation is not really conducive, no,” he says, and the wryness at least is communicable. He has tone, even if it's clumsy; he just has too much control over it. “If you asked me to help you find a way I'd try.”

If she asked him to find a way to walk into space, to fly without aid, he'd try. If she asked him to give her the galaxy – well, she already has, in a manner of speaking, and he said yes. He would do literally anything she asked, but this particular thing should be so small, so ordinary – and isn't.

They are not ordinary people.

“I was thinking about that, actually,” Revan says, and drops back to lie on the bed. There isn't enough room, even with her feet still on the ground; her head is off the other edge and her hair hangs down and piles up slightly on the floor. “It's theoretically possible, in the sense that I rarely end up in ground battles anymore, there's no hard and fast reason I couldn't command while in a physically – awkward, let's say, state, and labor doesn't tend to run more than forty-eight hours at the long side. The fleet's survived with me out of commission that long before, and if it was induced I could schedule it in advance.”

Her voice has turned mocking on the last sentence; mocking him or herself or the idea, he couldn't say.

He doesn't say _it would be a disaster_ because he knows she's not serious, and because he does love her, and he can feel something in her that he hasn't felt for a long time, besides the fear. It would be exaggerating to call it _hope_ or _want,_ absolutely laughable to suggest maternal instinct; he settles eventually on _wistfulness_.

“Do you want that?” he asks her, this time grateful for that absolute, conscious control of his voice.

“Nah.” She pulls her feet up onto the edge of the cot. Her head dangles lower off the other end as she shifts to fit them. “I mean, the pregnancy's theoretically doable, even it would be stupid as hell to try, seeing as nothing ever goes to plan in war. But after that – I what, hand it off to a wet nurse and see it every six months for ten hours at a time?”

“The war would be over eventually,” Malak says.

“Oh, yeah, that's great. _Assuming_ we win, I can bring up a kid in my copious spare time while running the fucking galaxy,” she says sarcastically. “And if not, the Jedi take it, probably, if it's even still alive.”

He has never heard her express this doubt over victory out loud, and yet she speaks as though the thought is laughable. A sudden thought occurs to him, then: she had not even considered that the war would end before he brought it up.

“You're not wrong,” he says, trying to store that thought for later, because it seems important.

“I can't have a family.” She smiles thinly. “Besides you, I mean. Which I _know_ , and you must think I'm fucking crazy to bring it up now--”

“Of course not,” he says, and wishes he still had his jaw because then he could kiss her and shut her up before she goes on down this road. It's a little less subtle to put a hand over her mouth, and she wouldn't react well. “It's an emotional situation.”

“It is.” She sighs.

“The war will be over,” he tells her again, because no war lasts _forever_ , and “We'll win it,” because both before and beyond tactics and military skill and the understanding that there are so many factors in a war, factors like economics and popular support and sheer stupid luck, he believes in _her._

It's the kind of knowledge acquired in childhood, before rationality asserts itself. Malak believes in Revan the way he believes that fire is hot and water is wet and gravity will take you down and crush you against the rocks below if you step off a cliff side. He believes in her _more_ ; if Revan told him to put his hand into an open flame, he'd do it, and if she asked him to jump...

Well, he's still falling, and he hasn't hit the ground yet.

He doesn't think she sees his point, so he goes on, “Things that we can't do now will be possible then. This isn't... If you want children, this isn't your only chance. We aren't locked into the path you see, and there are politicians who raise their own children, anyway.”

“Politicians.” She's smiling a little, but not like it's funny. “Fuck. You're right, you always are.” She sits up again and leans against him, but it's less limp than before, more like she just wants the touch.

“No,” he says. “That's you,” and he means it.

He slides an arm around her loosely, tangles his fingers in her hair, and tries to think of what to say next.

“So,” she says eventually, beating him to it, to his relief. “I guess that's... settled, then.”

“How long has it been?” Malak asks.

“I skipped last month and thought it was stress again until I started sensing irregularities.” Revan sighs again. “I think I'm around six or seven weeks, I've kind of lost track.”

Early enough it doesn't have to be surgical, then, and Malak is briefly, yet intensely relieved he doesn't have to ask her if she wants him to do it or if she would prefer someone she doesn't know. He's fairly certain of what she would answer – he is the one who does as much of her medical care as possible because she doesn't _trust_ anyone else, and he can't see her trusting a stranger more with this – and he does not want to cope with that. He doesn't want either of them to.

“You'll need at least a day off, you may be incapacitated for a while, and some women are sick for longer,” he says instead. “Assuming seven weeks, you have two to three weeks before it would have to be surgical.”

“Yeah,” Revan says quietly. “I was looking it up before the Admiral called.” She turns her face back into his chest.

In a few minutes, they will have to finish planning, set a date when she can be in bed in her quarters without problems and establish who will be there to take command in case of an emergency. For now, they sit in Revan's quarters together, for the first time in months.

She isn't crying. Malak hasn't seen her cry in years, except in adrenaline cool down. He feels, in the Force, the quiet easing of her fear, even as the softness of the wistfulness turns to grief as incorporeal as mist.

They'll be more careful in the future. If there is a future to be careful in.

_The war_ will _be over some day,_ he tells himself without understanding why he needs to repeat it. All wars end.

**Author's Note:**

> So, the explanation of this is that a long time ago on ff.net, I read a fic I will not name that used Revan aborting an accidental pregnancy mid Jedi Civil War as a thematic betrayal akin to murder, and I have never stopped being angry about it, and apparently I had to process it with fic ten years later.


End file.
